"Tuning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... district at an altitude of 10,000 feet above the earth's surface. Because of the crystal glint of duranium they were invisible to earth dwellers at that height. Then we used a suction draft at night, drawing the talc from the earth, filling one drum after another. This is done by tuning in a certain selective attraction that attracts only talc. It draws it right out of your ground in tiny particles and assembles it in the transportation drums as pure talc. On the earth, if noticed at all, it would have been called a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... In the great world one makes a small one of his own. I see young witches there quite naked all, And old ones who, more prudent, cover. For my sake some flight things look over; The fun is great, the trouble small. I hear them tuning instruments! Curs'd jangle! Well! one must learn with such things not to wrangle. Come on! Come on! For so it needs must be, Thou shalt at once be introduced by me. And I new thanks from thee be earning. That is no scanty space; what sayst thou, friend? Just take a look! ...
— Faust • Goethe
... have no composition at all; but a kind of tuning and riming fall in what they write. It runs and slides, and only makes a sound. Women's poets they are called, as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... consist in a ring very variously chased, and the infallible insignia of a tuning-fork: without this no professional singer does or can exist. The thing has been tried, and found a failure. Its uses are remarkable and various: like the "death's-head and cross-bones" of the pirates, or the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... Maurice and Henry Scott. They were not, perhaps, quite beyond suspicion as to sobriety, but there was no fear of their being unable to do their duty reasonably well. The happy news of their arrival being made known by the commencement of a vigorous tuning, the doors of the dressing-rooms opened, and the ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... melody they're tuning Has the sweet and sleepy crooning That the mother hums the baby at her breast, Till the world forgets its sorrow And the cares that haunt the morrow, And is sinking, hushed and happy, to its rest Sometimes bubbling o'er with gladness, Sometimes soft ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wouldn't wonder much if I was," answered Joel, taking a tuning-fork from his pocket and striking it upon the table. "I've kep' singin' school one term, besides leadin' the Methodis' choir in Slocumville: so I orto know a ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... will certainly not—"The king paused and listened attentively. It seemed to him as if he heard the sound of a violin in the adjoining room, accompanied by the light tones of a flute. Yes, it was indeed so; some one was tuning a violin and the soft sound of the flute mingled with the violoncello. A flush of rosy joy lighted the king's face—he cast a questioning glance upon the marquis, who nodded smilingly. With a joyful cry ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... England to take up the idea and improve it. Christofori solved three important problems: first, the construction of thicker strings to withstand the hammer action; second, a way to compensate for the weakness caused by the opening in the tuning-pin block; third, the mechanical control of the rebound of the hammer from the strings, so that the hammer should not block against the latter ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... against my country or my Queen, nor even blench. But do not suppose that it is with any light or childish joy that I resolve to follow in the steps of Zenobia to the field of slaughter. I would far rather sit here in the midst of security and peace, making mimic war on my embroidery, or tuning my voice and harp, with Gracchus and you to listen and applaud. But there is that within me that forbids my stay. I am urged from within by a voice which seems as the voice of a god, to do according to my strength, for what may be the last struggle ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... extended, and the other gives the number if he can. I show my thought, another his; if they agree, well; if they differ, we find the largest common factor, if we can, but at any rate avoid disputing about remainders and fractions, which is to real talk what tuning an instrument ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... telegraphic station is not necessarily difficult. The progress made since my father and myself began these experiments has been, of course, considerable, and yet so far as I am able to ascertain the new devices in this direction were largely anticipated by us. The tuning of wireless messages by which the interception of messages is prevented was certainly forestalled by us, though in the communications with Mars herein detailed the ordinary [non-syntonic.—Editor] ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... silence, the three ladies listened to the melancholy harper and the lachrymose fiddlers who, on the estrade in the far corner, sat tuning their instruments. At last the people began to come in. The first were a few stray blackcoats, then feminine voices were heard in the passages, and necks and arms, green toilettes and white satin shoes, were seen passing and taking seats. Two Miss Duffys, the fattest of the four, were with their ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... With the tuning key of his matchless genius he struck the chords of sorrow to their inmost tone and played on the heart strings of joy with the tender vibrations of an aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the wild flowers ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... fame, Where luxury my remaining years May crown, and happiness may find—or tears; 'Tis true! I should have welcomed the bar-ru;[1] But he hath since returned to Subartu."[2] His harp he took from its dust-covered case, And kissed its carved and well-remembered face; And tuning it, he glanced toward the wood, And sang his farewell ode ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... of no good retort to make at that moment. And since the odd buzzing had stopped, and all three fiddlers were tuning up for more dance music, in his excitement Buster forgot all about the raising bee again, the bumblebee in the pumpkin, and even his ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the earthquake shock as an oscillation. It is a quality of all bodies which oscillate under the influence of a blow, such as originates in earthquake shocks, to swing to and fro, after the manner of the metal in a bell or a tuning fork, in a succession of movements, each less than the preceding, until the impulse is worn out, or rather, we should in strict sense say, changed to other forms of energy. The result is, that even in the slightest earthquake shock the earth moves not once ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the love of a true city editor for his paper, and the love of a mother for her child or a miser for his gold is no greater love than that, let me tell you. "You knew about this thing here?" He beat with two fingers that danced like the prongs of a tuning fork on the paper spread out in front of him. "You ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... hummed With lights and people. Gebnitz was to sing, That rare soprano. All the fiddles strummed With tuning up; the wood-winds made a ring Of reedy bubbling noises, and the sting Of sharp, red brass pierced every eardrum; patting From muffled tympani made ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... spreading sails; but thee, fair, gentle maid, whom Mnesis, happy nymph, first on the banks of Hebrus did produce. Thee, whom Maeonia educated, whom Mantua charmed, and who, on that fair hill which overlooks the proud metropolis of Britain, sat'st, with thy Milton, sweetly tuning the heroic lyre; fill my ravished fancy with the hopes of charming ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the statement was greeted by the audience with great and prolonged applause, that, after a little adjustment of the "Sympathetic Transmitter," it was found that by the sounding of one of the small English tuning forks I had brought with me from the other side of the Atlantic, upon the said "Transmitter," I could myself start the vibrodyne, and cause it to revolve rapidly, without Mr Keely's intervention, and I exhibited ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... heavily as his spurs caught and twanged like tuning- forks. "War's declared at midnight. Pedantics be sugared! Buy an 'am an' ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... abstracted;—therefore it is poetical, though not in strictness natural—(the distinction to which I have so often alluded)—and is purposely restrained from concentering the interest on itself, but used merely as an induction or tuning for what is ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... to still her child, will tell my story And fright her crying babe with Tarquin's name; The orator, to deck his oratory, Will couple my reproach to Tarquin's shame: Feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame, Will tie the hearers to attend each line, How Tarquin wronged me, ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... old doctor, giving her a look made up of humourous vexation and real sadness,—"I wish I knew the right tuning-key to ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... positively thrust their fingers in their ears, that they may not hear a word of what is coming, though perhaps the very next act may be composed in a style as different as possible, and be written quite to their own tastes. These Adders refuse to hear the voice of the charmer, because the tuning of his instrument gave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... resonators in music. They can be adjusted or attuned to the electric waves as a string or pipe is to sonorous waves. In this way the receiver can be made to work only when electric waves of a certain rate are passing through the tube, just as a tuning-fork resounds to a certain note; it being understood that the length of the waves can be regulated by adjusting the balls of the transmitter. As the etheric waves produced by the sparks, like ripples of water caused by dropping a stone ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... thee." "O Allah cause her to sing vilely!" quoth Ja'afar. Asked the Caliph, "Why so?"; and he answered, "If thou crucify us all together, we shall keep one another company." The Caliph laughed at his speech. Presently the damsel took the lute and, after looking at it and tuning it, she played a measure which made all hearts yearn to her; then ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Utopia where mind penetrates mind, heart understands heart. We heard neither the squeaking of a swing beneath us, nor the shouts of laughter along the promenades, nor the sound of a band tuning up in a neighboring pavilion. Our eyes, raised to heaven, failed to see the night descending upon us, vast and silent, piercing the foliage with its first stars. Now and again a warm breath passed over us, blown from the woods; I tasted its ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the hound bay in Shadowland, Tuning his ear to understand What voice hath tamed this Aerie; Chafe, chafe he may The stag all day, And ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... Then, there was a very interesting production of three little keys for the aforesaid cases, and a melodramatic expression of horror at finding a string broken; and a vast deal of screwing and tightening, and winding, and tuning, during which Mrs. Briggs expatiated to those near her on the immense difficulty of playing a guitar, and hinted at the wondrous proficiency of her daughters in that mystic art. Mrs. Taunton whispered to a neighbour that it was 'quite sickening!' and the Misses Taunton looked as if ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to mark it off from science; but since literary prose and oratory are also belles lettres, we must still seek the differentia of poetry by a comparison of it with these co-ordinate species. A compound word often exhibits genus and difference upon its face: as 're-turn,' 'inter-penetrate,' 'tuning-fork,' 'cricket-bat'; but the two last would hardly be understood without inspection or further description. And however a definition be discovered, it is well to state it per genus ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... walls decorated with fern leaves. In a window recess one of the caterer's men was setting out two punch bowls and a multitude of glass cups; three or four musicians were gathered about the piano, tuning up, and one heard the subdued note of a cornet; the air was heavy with the smell of pinks and of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's immortal fire With mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... was a girl named Arabella Jones. She got in quite a lot while he was vainly trying to remember where he had last seen the damned girl. He had just succeeded in getting back to his own topic when the Cuddiford girl from next door dashed in without a hat to borrow a tuning-fork. It had been quite a business finding the tuning-fork, and when she was gone they had to begin all over again. They had quarrelled about the drawing-room carpet; about her sister Florrie's birthday present; and the ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... accompaniment after supper. We had stewed chickens and a flask of Cesanese, I remember, and I knew something would happen to the piano. But Nino would never have any other, for De Pretis had a very good one; and Nino studies without anything—just a common tuning-fork that he carries in his pocket. But the old piano was the beginning of his fame. He got into the sitting-room one day, by himself, and found out that he could make a noise by striking the keys, and then he discovered that he could ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... eastern skies were pulsing with fitful promise of the dawn; but within the vast enclosure of the aerodrome the gloom of night lingered so stubbornly that two huge search-lights had been pressed into the service of those engaged in tuning up the motor ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Freshmen with a "now-you-see-what-you've-joined" expression, or nudged each other reminiscently, until the live-oaks in the pasture almost blended with the long shadows under them, and hoarse-throated frogs were tuning up in the irrigating ditches. Then they formed four abreast and went down for the mail, humming a march song and lifting their hats in concert to Professor Stillwell and his wife, smiling from their porch. At the post-office ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... only a very small expenditure of money to get this material together. You see how many things I've used that any one of you can find about the house, such as tinfoil, curtain poles, curtain rings, wood for the box, and so on. The wire needed for your tuning coil and your aerial can be obtained for less than a dollar. The detector, including the crystal, can be got for another dollar. An excellent receiver can be bought for two dollars. A few minor things will be needed at perhaps five or ten cents ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... work out the peg-holes nicely; then fit ebony or rosewood pegs as you fancy, cutting off the superfluous pieces which obtrude on the off-side of peg-box. Apply a little soap and chalk to ensure close working when tuning. ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... dinner bell is rung, its motion or vibration may be felt on touching it with the finger. If a tuning fork is made to give forth sound by striking it against the knee, or hitting it with a rubber hammer, and is then touched to the surface of water, small sprays of water will be thrown out, showing that the prongs ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... in the way. I shall hope to be dismissed presently. I can hear you are tuning up, Charles. Ah, well, I shall have a clown for a husband. What more should a married woman wish for? And plenty of time to catch the roses and the sighs wafting up from my gardens. But Charles, where is your little ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... delightful anticipations concentrated themselves into one rose-coloured point of joy, when no less than two independent observers, without collusion, saw the piano-tuner either entering or leaving The Hurst, while a third, an ear-witness, unmistakably heard the tuning of the piano actually going on. It was thus clear to all penetrating minds that Olga Bracely was going to sing. It was further known that something was going on between her and Georgie, for she had ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... as she began tuning her strings. It did seem like the funniest thing she had ever heard. The picture of Pennington, girt with a sack for an apron, with that plump, quaint face of his, and those kindly, fussy ways, drying ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... her way, a remarkable woman. She has been described by her daughter as "a great artist lost for want of development"; showing a wonderful dexterity in whatever she put her hand to, no matter if practiced in it or not. "She tried everything, and always succeeded"—sewing, drawing, tuning the piano—"she would have made shoes, locks, furniture, had it been necessary." But her tastes were simple and domestic. Though married out of her rank, she was entirely without any vain ambition to push herself into fashionable society, the constraint of which, moreover, she could not bear. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... wings comes the tuning of the violins. A flute ripples up and down in a care-free manner as though the villain Kazrac were already dead and virtue had come into its own. The orchestra emerges from below. Their calmness is but a ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... as he heard the wail of the child announcing it wanted to be taken out of the cradle, "there's the blackbird tuning up." ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Cayley,[473] who certainly ought to know his subject, being himself a large manufacturer of the new terms which he explains. Again, though "Music" in genere, as the schoolmen said, has only nine columns, "Temperament and Tuning," has eight, and "Chord" alone has two. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... noticing the tears; "how goes on the opera? I heard through the door the orchestra tuning ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands; How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue, How sweet the periods neither said nor sung. Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... for producing hypnotism will, if carried to just the right degree, produce catalepsy. For instance, besides the fixing of the eye on a bright object, catalepsy may be produced by a sudden sound, as of a Chinese gong, a tom-tom or a whistle, the vibration of a tuning-fork, or thunder. If a solar spectrum is suddenly brought into a dark room it may produce catalepsy, which is also produced by looking at the sun, or a lime light, or an ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... the Chief of Police—who, by the way, was said to have become immensely rich in Alaska while Lane's paper was running into bankruptcy in Tacoma. But Lane's misadventure was not wholly due to his civic virtue. He had "bought in" at just the moment when the instruments were tuning up for the prelude to the great panic crash of 1893. Tacoma, and the whole Northwest, had been mainly developed by casual investments of speculative Eastern capital, and this capital, sensitive to change, was being withdrawn to meet home needs. ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... copy. Let others live their own lives, but you see to it that you live yours. Many of our public schools are turning out factory-made human beings; each pupil, as far as possible, a duplicate of every other. They are educational brick factories tuning out their products stamped exactly alike. Individuality is crushed out. Now the child is not so much like clay to be molded into any form, as it is like a precious crystal, that must be shaped with regard to its original nature. Each human soul ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... Already the orchestra was tuning up, the wide porches were filling with well-dressed people, while a stream of coaches at the door was delivering the arrivals on the special from Colon. It was a very animated crowd, sprinkled plentifully with Spanish ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry, that I may again quicken my attention. The birds peck the berries, or the corn, and fly away to the groves, where they sit, in seeming happiness, on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I, likewise, can call the lutanist and the singer, but the sounds, that pleased me yesterday, weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-morrow. I can discover within me no power ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... tuning notes were sounded, and then the violinist began to play. Her skill was undoubted, but the feeling and pathos which she threw into the long-drawn sighing notes were more remarkable even than her skill. There was a touch of genius in her performance which held the ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... am on nodding terms with a meditative turncock who lingers in one of them, and whom I suspect of a turn for poetry; the rather, as he looks out of temper when he gives the fire-plug a disparaging wrench with that large tuning-fork of his which would wear out the shoulder of his coat, but for a precautionary piece of inlaid leather. Fire-ladders, which I am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and the keys of which were lost in ancient times, moulder away in the larger churchyards, under eaves ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... is that noise?" he asked in surprise as he heard string and brass instruments tuning up ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... proprieties of the essential kind—cannot endure between man and maid cast alone in a wilderness. They become frail, insipid; and mar, rather than perfect, the harmony of existence. Contraversely, their absence adds a deeper luster, strikes the tuning-fork that hums with the true note of life. Sorry the man who does not feel a sympathetic vibration! A woman is not exactly at her best when bathing her face above a porcelain bowl, and to be the constant, daily witness of such ablutions would, in my limited experience, engender a slight unrest ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... between the weekly and the annual observance. A party of convivial musicians, next door to a friend of mine, hung suspended in this manner on the brink of their diversions. From ten o'clock on Sunday night, my friend heard them tuning their instruments; and as the hour of liberty drew near, each must have had his music open, his bow in readiness across the fiddle, his foot already raised to mark the time, and his nerves braced for execution; for hardly had the twelfth stroke sounded from the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... day aright with this tuning-fork, and hush the babel-voices of the world to its tones of peace ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... was in the garage in full uniform, looking over and tuning up the car, without an unnecessary word. She was the professional, alert, cheerful, efficient—and handsomer than ever, thought French, ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... might be regarded as exclamation points, Mrs. Allen and her daughters swept away to take their places at the head of the parlors in order to receive. They liked the prelude of applause upstairs well enough, but then it was only like the tuning of the instruments before the orchestra ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... meet before that. I shall do what I can, but upon my word I feel, you know," he laughed, "that such a tuning-up as YOU'VE given me will last me a long time. It's like the high Alps." Then with his hand out again he added: "Have ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... lives on. He perhaps has played his part in the world symphony and, his present work finished, he lays his instrument aside. This body of ours is the instrument of the spirit: no wedding feast without a wedding garment, and no part or lot in the physical world without a body. The tuning of the body to delicate response and high endeavour enables the spirit to express its melody the better, and therefore it is incumbent upon the musician to cultivate a high standard of physical health. This does not mean the maximum of nourishment, ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... has made piano tuning easier by means of an instrument which he calls the phonopticon. Any one who will take the trouble to use it will find that it produces such absolute correctness, that the most practiced ear could not attain to similar perfection. This ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Band was tuning up, and the house, which was built like a large bungalow, decorated all over with crimson rambler rosebuds, looked very gay and charming. Sir James beamed as various names, more or less well known in various worlds, were incorrectly announced. Felicity went into a small room ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... devotion, God promises he shall reign his equal for ever and judge mankind, ere he bids the heavenly host worship their new master. Removing their crowns of amaranth and gold, the angels kneel before Christ in adoration, and, tuning their harps, sing the praises of Father and Son, proclaiming the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... the instruments to a single note, so must you tune your various bodies in order that harmoniously they may allow the spiritual force to come through from the higher to the lower plane. It is a real tuning, a real making of harmonious vibrations; and the difference between the vibrations that are harmonious and the vibrations that are discordant, from this point of view, is this: when all the bodies vibrate together, all the particles and their spaces ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... arranging themselves and the musicians tuning up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... wearily. "This is a complete breakdown. It's come just in time, too, that girl has been trying to kill herself. I understand that her furlough has arrived. You'd better get her North on the next transport. I guess that our angels are more popular in our hospitals just now than they would be tuning little gilt harps aloft. We can't spare 'em, Mrs. Craig, and I guess the Most High can ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Mike; don't put yourself out!' said Klaus patronizingly, seating himself upon a chest, and then tuning his fiddle. 'Getting into a passion won't bring the shiners back! What do you say, gossip, to a tune? Will you dance if I play? I have improved wonderfully, I can tell you, since I left this half-and-half sort of a world. Nobody dances now to my touch who doesn't praise it to the skies. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... he has forgotten the birds, who at the first streak of gray in the east have assembled in the trees near his chamber-window, and keep up for an hour the most rasping dissonance,—an orchestra in which each artist is tuning his instrument, setting it in a different key and to play a different tune: each bird recalls a different tune, and none sings "Annie Laurie,"—to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... E-flat major (No. 1) I have now hit on the expedient of striking the triangle (which aroused such anger and gave such offence) quite lightly with a tuning-fork—and in the Finale (Marcia) I have pretty nearly struck it out altogether, because the ordinary triangle-virtuosi as a rule come in wrong and ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... my love was sitting in a grove, Tuning her smiles unto the chirping songs, But straight she spied where two together strove, Each one complaining of the other's wrongs. Cupid did cry lamenting of the harm; Jove's messenger, thou wrong'st me too too far; Use thou thy rod, rely upon the charm; Think not by ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... partly for distinction, for a woman having beauty to shine in the sphere of beauty; but chiefly to love and be loved, therefore to live. She had yesterday read letters of a man who broke a music from the word—about as much music as there is in a tuning—fork, yet it rang and lingered; and he was not the magical musician. Now those letters were as dust of the road. The sphere of beauty was a glass lamp-globe for delirious moths. She had changed. Belief in the real change gave her full view of the compliant ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... idea immense. Andy was a man of an involved nature. He was never content to plod along, as I was, selling to the peasantry some little tool like a combination steak beater, shoe horn, marcel waver, monkey wrench, nail file, potato masher and Multum in Parvo tuning fork. Andy had the artistic temper, which is not to be judged as a preacher's or a moral man's is by purely commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer, and strikes out ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... the piano," the little girl said; and she took a tuning-hammer out of her knapsack, and began her work in real earnest. She evidently knew what she was about, and pegged away at the notes as though her whole life depended upon ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... paced one of the main parlors of the hotel, his eyes riveted on the street entrance, he heard a laugh behind him; a laugh tempered with a vibrant mellowness which was of a sort with no other laugh, and which set him vibrating in turn, as promptly as a tuning-fork ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... the process of educating public opinion against Russia commenced. In fact, it required little tuning to arouse a national chorus, which was swelled subsequently by the Social Democratic voices, demanding that Russia too ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... this with two tuning-forks. I strike one, and it sounds D, the third space in the treble; I strike the other, and it sounds G, the first leger line, five notes above the C. I have drawn on this diagram (Fig. 35), an imaginary picture of these two sets of waves. You see that ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... deep, premonitory stillness, broken only by the precentor, who covertly struck his tuning-fork on the round of his chair, and held it to his ear with a faint, accordant hum; then the minister arose and spread his hands in solemn invocation ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... the papers "thrillingly interesting," and "intensely exciting;" he has slept during a political speech, reported as one continued stream of enchaining eloquence, delivered amid thunders of applause; and now, under the blaze of astral lamps, and pink and green candles, while the musicians were tuning their fiddles, and producing all sorts of discordant sounds, he was dozing as quietly as if in his own rocking-chair. Uncle Dozie seldom talked when he could help it; the chief business and pleasure of his life consisted in superintending his brother's vegetable-garden; he had never ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... brightly lighted windows and wide-open doors, and hearing gay strains of pianos and violins, sounds which floated out from every door and mingled in a strange chaos, as though an unseen orchestra were tuning up in the darkness above the roofs, Vassilyev was surprised ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... are senseless, deaf that tomb, This is the callous, cold resort of art. 'I give you this.' What do I give? to whom? Words to the air, and balm to my own heart, To its old luxurious and commanded smart. An end to all this tuning, This cynical masquerading; What comfort now in that far final gloom ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... advice, she trips laughingly and carelessly up the stairs to the room, from which proceed faint sounds of music, increasing to quite an olla podri-da of sound as the apartment is reached—for the musicians are tuning up. The beautiful duchess is soon recognized, and as soon in deep gossip with her friends. But who is that gentlemanly man leaning over the chamber-organ? That is Sir Roger L'Estrange, an admirable performer on the violoncello, and a great ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... and his voice was well-tuned for the tender serious manner, had her ears been alive to such tuning. "Alexandrina, this is a very important step that you and I ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... are spacemen," he said, "they'd probably have a hard time figuring out this country by listening to our broadcasts. Imagine tuning in soap operas, 'The Lone Ranger,' and a couple of crime yarns, along with newscasts about strikes and murders and the cold war. They might pick up some of those kid programs about rocket ships. A few days of listening to that ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... light emanating from the lovely planet overhead, and which turned all it fell on, whether tree, or tower, or stream, to beauty, was the artificial glare caused by the torches near the pavilion; while the discordant sounds occasioned by the minstrels tuning their instruments, disturbed the repose. As they went on, however, these sounds were lost in the distance, and the glare of the torches was excluded by intervening trees. Then the moon looked down lovingly upon them, and the only music that reached their ears arose from the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... turning the music. Then Kirkwood was reminded of the existence of his 'cello. Amzi watched him tuning it, noted the operation ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... back by now. Calm and decisive, he takes his seat in his own room, like the conductor of an orchestra preparing to raise his baton now that the tuning-up is finished. The leader-writers are coming in for their instructions. No need for much consultation to-night—not for the first leader anyhow. For the second—well, there are a good many things one could suggest: Turkey or Persia or the ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... was already tuning his violin when Mary came from the bedroom, and sat down on the sofa. The instant he had got it to his mind, he turned, and, going to the farthest corner of the room, closed his eyes tight, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... to understand this theory of Radiation and Absorption, it will be well for us if we look at a similar effect in the sphere of music and sound. Let us suppose that we have two tuning-forks of the same pitch, placed on a table at a distance of a foot from each other. If we set one of the forks vibrating, the waves which it radiates through the air will fall upon the other one, and will also set it in vibration, because they are of the same period or size as those waves ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... was almost beside himself. He cut out rock samples and carried them back to the ship. He personally supervised the tuning of the surveyors. And when he finally gave orders to take off, he was almost friendly to Mason, whereas before his attitude toward him had been one ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... and replied, quite loud now, for the choir leader had stood up already with his tuning-fork in hand, and one could hear ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... a panel on the altar of S. Pietro Martire in the aforesaid Church of the Nuns of the Corpus Domini, containing the said Saint, S. Nicholas, and S. Benedict, with landscapes in perspective, an angel tuning a cithern, and many little figures more than passing good. And if this man had not died young, it may be believed that he would have ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... struck two fingers on the capstan after the manner of a tuning-fork, and, holding them gravely to his ear as if to get the right pitch, began in a really fine manly voice to chant the ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... he done, what did he mean——? But the girl's inward challenge to him lost itself in a mist of faintness; she was screwing herself up to a purpose of her own, and it hurt almost to anguish, and the whole place, around her, was a blur and swim, through which she heard the tuning of fiddles. Before she knew it she had said to him, 'Why ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... crow's-nest, as soon as we should again find ourselves among the ice.] which I have had fitted up for her reception abaft the binnacle. A spacious meadow of sweet-scented hay has been laid down in a neighbouring corner for her further accommodation; and the Doctor is tuning up his flageolet, in order to complete the bucolic character of the scene. The only personage amongst us at all disconcerted by these arrangements is the little white fox which has come with us from Iceland. Whether he considers the admission on board of so domestic ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... berserk, and things like that. And as he told of the breaking of the ring, and our stand inside of it, Alfred the Atheling wrote fast, and presently he bade Wulfhere cease, and going to a corner took down a harp, while his father smiled on him, and tuning it, broke out into a wondrous war song that made our hearts beat fast, for we seemed to feel that it was full of the very shout and ring of battle inside our circle of foes, and we were as men who looked on and saw our own deeds over again, only made more glorious ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... in his work-calloused and crooked hands and began tuning it. The group at the kitchen door turned to listen, their faces lighting up a little. Rose tried to get ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... up. An Englishman? Bewildered, he bent to the trifling labour of tuning the violins. Hawksley rejected the first two instruments after thrumming the strings with his thumb. He struck up a melody on the third but did not ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the girl ironically; and she added, with the kind of repellent lure with which women know how to leave men the responsibility of any reciprocal approach, "I don't know whether it won't need tuning first." ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... other day when he serenaded you. Heavens! one would have taken him for an ass braying. And his lyre! what a thing! A stag's skull, with its horns for the uprights; he put a bar across, and fastened on the strings without any tuning-pegs! then came the performance, all harsh and out of tune; he shouted something himself, and the lyre played something else, and the love ditty sent us into fits of laughter. Why, Echo, chatterbox that she is, would not answer him; she was ashamed ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... clear, still evening of June: silver reaches of Isis and Cher; meadows pied with moon daisies and clover, and the rose madder bloom of ripe grasses; the trill of unseen birds tuning up for evensong; the passing and repassing of boats and canoes and punts, gay with cushions and summer frocks; all bathed in the level radiance that steals over earth like a presence in the last hours ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... while the katydids seemed to keep time to their heart-beats; the fiddles began tuning for another reel, and the horses, tethered near, stretched out their necks with ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... turned to the proper channels—different ones at different times of day—with incredible facility. The smallest child could wrench at a tuning-knob and the desired station came on. All the operating devices of Research Installation 83 worked as if they liked to—which might have been alarming except that they never did anything of themselves. They initiated nothing. But each one acted like ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... God.[1] How much more, then, must we prepare with all care for the stupendous act of celebrating Mass, before which, in the words of the Preface, the powers of Heaven tremble? How can one play on a lute without tuning it?" "Why do you not make this preparation earlier, in your morning exercise, which I know, or at least I think, you never neglect?" "I rise at four o'clock in the summer, sometimes sooner," I replied, "and I do not go to the Altar ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... The tuning of the six strings on the bass-viol was, on the bass staff, 1st string, or treble, D over the staff; 2nd or small mean, A on the top line; 3rd or great mean, E in the third space; 4th or counter-tenor, C in the second space; 5th or tenor, or gamut, G on the first line; and the 6th ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... Master Anthony commenced tuning, which aroused the inquiries of several well-ordered and decently-disposed rooks who were not given to disturb their neighbours at untimely hours, and were just at the soundest part of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... his way homeward, had to walk down 'Fairy Green Lane,' just above the farmstead of Cefn Cloddiau, and to banish fear, which he felt was gradually obtaining the mastery over him, instead of whistling, drew out from the skirt pocket of his long-tailed great coat his favourite instrument. After tuning it, be commenced elbowing his way through his favourite air, Aden Ddu'r Fran (the Crow's Black Wing). When he passed over the green sward where the Tylwyth Teg, or Fairies, held their merry meetings, he heard something rattle ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... and sort out the rest of my visitors. I am putting Philip and Chick over in the west wing, far removed from the nursery, for I don't want them imagining they are kept awake by the night thoughts of my child. And, I must confess, Fleurette has a way of tuning up in the wee, small hours! However, we had the nursery walls muffled, so I don't think you'll be disturbed. Isn't ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... spacious vistas stretched away from an equally spacious hallway, where a wide and graceful staircase curved up to a low gallery, smothered in flowers and palms and vines; and even so early the musicians were taking their places and tuning their instruments. On the floor above, where room after room shone in beauty, with costly furnishings, and perfect harmonies, white-capped maids flitted about, putting last touches to dressing tables and pausing to gossip ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... play for me, when I get back, the overture of 'Tannhauser'. Play it, mind; no tuning-up sort of thing, like last Sunday's performance. Practise it, my son! Is it a bargain? I'm not going to work for nothing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... maintain his assumed character while the servants were removing the table, was tuning his harp when the Earl of Gloucester entered the room. The earl told Bruce the king had required the attendance of the border minstrel, and that after searching over the castle, the royal seneschal had ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... a tuning fork against the desk, then hold the prongs lightly against your lips. Can you feel them vibrate? Tap it again, and hold the fork close to your ear. Can you ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... harsh and irregular motions of the soul and secures deep peace for it. Against these sayings of Aristo no one had anything to offer in reply, since it was quite evident he was jesting. I suggested to him to take a cup and treat it as a lyre, tuning it to the harmony and order he praised. At the same time a slave came offering him pure wine. But he refused it, saying with a laugh that he was discussing logical not organic music. To what had been said before my father added that Jove seemed to have taken, according to the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Service with the Holy Communion, which was very nice, though, as it was a Feast Day, the service was later than usual, so it took all our morning. Rex played the organ. We spent most of the afternoon in tuning the organ, and then R. went off to mesmerize a man for neuralgia, and I went up town to try and ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... thought the big rooms looked very inviting with their white floors; the folding-doors had been rolled back, and the parlour and dining-room made an immense sweep. The vases on the mantels were full of flowers. In the distance she heard the tuning of ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the Tuning Fork trench system at the present moment," said I. "The Babe and the grooms are digging him out. If you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... during the whole of this time the Yakumo, with several other cruisers, and our four battleships, had been lying at anchor at our rendezvous at the Elliot Islands, not idle by any means, but, like the Yakumo, "tuning up" for a certain eventuality, the approach of which we all seemed to sense in some ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... later. Mesmer held that thought was communicated from brain to brain "by the vibrations of a subtle fluid with which the nerve substance is in continuity." Truly, if any sort of physical action is employed, this seems a significant enough remark. We know that two tuning forks will resound in unison, if one of them be struck. Put in motion a magnetized needle; at a certain distance and without contact another magnetized needle will oscillate synchronously with the first. Set in vibration a violin string, or the string of a piano; and ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... Spaniard's. "After the second Battle of Newbury," by Cattermole, is a well-imagined scene, but is defective in that in which we should have supposed the artist would not have failed. It is not moonlight. "Tuning," by J. W. Wright, is a good proof that blue, as Gainsborough likewise proved, is not necessarily cold. His "Confession," with the two graceful figures, is very sweet. "The Gap of Dunloe," W. A. Nesfield—has fine folding forms—the distance and rainbow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... were no near neighbors to whom the portentous secret might leak out. There was not one defective voice in the class save Harry's, and he was at first a puzzle; but that difficulty vanished when it was learned that his fondest ambition was satisfied by striking the tuning-fork. Thereafter all went smoothly, with much enthusiasm and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... life in the inorganic world. We have but to look around to see the truth of the statement that All is Alive. There is that which is known as the "fatigue of elasticity" in metals. Razors get tired, and require a rest. Tuning forks lose their powers of vibration, to a degree, and have to be given a vacation. 'Machinery in mills and manufactories needs an occasional day off. Metals are subject to disease and infection, and have been ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... to the box and began moving the metal switch arms back and forth, thus tuning in more perfectly as indicated by the increased and clearer sound and the absence of interference from other broadcasting stations, noticed at first by a low buzzing. In a moment the music came clear and sweet, the stirring ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the installation of a receptor, when his earplug buzzed. He thrust his chin against the tuning plate, switching from gang to interoffice band. "Mike?" said Avis Page's voice, ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... violin is just tolerated in a sort of appendix to the more important subject of the "Treble, Tenor, and Bass Viols." It consists chiefly of various methods of ensuring accuracy in tuning the fifths, and the question of bowing is summarily treated ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... which made him the dread of all candidates who appeared before the session desiring "to come forward." It was to many an impressive sight to see Straight Rory rise in the precentor's box, feel round, with much facial contortion, for the pitch—he despised a tuning-fork—and then, straightening himself up till he bent over backwards, raise the chant that introduced the tune to the congregation. But to the young men under the gallery he was more humorous than impressive, and it ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... read. "Buff-and-crimson cards will mark the trail of all goods ready for the sale. We are tuning up. By September it is our intention to have assembled in these two great buildings the most fashionable merchandise ever shown. No one piece of goods will be permitted to linger that lacks, in any detail, the aesthetic ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... at the tall, well-dressed man of whom his father had thought so highly. Charles Benton, in spite of his hair tuning grey, was a handsome man, and moved in a very good circle of society. Nobody knew his source of income, and nobody cared. In these days clothes make the gentleman, ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... or absorbed in the "Marriage a la Mode"; days when even Giorgione's Pastoral may (as in Rossetti's sonnet) mean nothing beyond the languid pleasure of sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of water and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion, the same interest and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an inn-parlour oleograph. Then, as regards scientific interest and pleasure, there may be days when ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... a pencil and struck a sharp blow on the table. "There you have a single blow," he said, "just one isolated noise. Now if I strike this tuning fork you have a vibrating note. In other words, a succession of blows or wave vibrations of a certain kind affects the ear and we call it sound, just as a succession of other wave vibrations affects the retina and we have sight. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... organ of hearing placed on the head. We say on, rather than in, the head, because it is formed by a modification of part of the antennae. A German naturalist, named Mayer, performed an experiment to prove that the hairs on these antennae can be made to vibrate by means of a tuning-fork. Only those hairs which have to do with the production of sound answered to the notes of the tuning-fork, and these vibrated at the rate of five hundred and twelve vibrations per second. Other hairs vibrated to other notes, which were those of the middle octave of the piano ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... you breathe on the place in question. Another has called memory the safe of the mind. It is the opinion of E. Hering[2] that what we once were conscious of and are conscious of again, does not endure as image but as echo such as may be heard in a tuning fork when it is properly struck. Reid asserts that memory does not have present ideas, but past things for its object, Natorp explains recollection as an identification of the unidentical, of not-now with now. According to Herbart and his school,[3] memory ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... orchestra filed in and began tuning their instruments, it was the signal for an influx of loiterers from the door. There were a large number of coloured people in the audience, and because members of their own race were giving the performance, they seemed to take a proprietary ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... been captured, and had given information to the effect that the enemy were going to make another desperate attack that morning along the La Bassee Canal. We were accordingly ordered at once to man part of the Sailly-Labourse "Locality," known as the "Tuning Fork Line," just in front of that village, so-called because it formed part of a system of trenches and breastworks shaped like a tuning fork. There was some slight delay in getting the orders passed on, and it was 4.30 a.m. before we marched off. This was unfortunate, for we were not ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... reported that "the placing of a tuning-fork; against the body of a patient enables him to gauge the limits of the liver with almost hair-breadth precision." He believes that musical diagnosis will prove reliable in the case of broken bones, and asserts that already it has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... dance down the road like wriggling circumflexes to accent a false promise of coolness off there in the distance; the ominous emptiness of the landscape; the brooding quiet, cut through only by the frogs and the dry flies tuning up for their evening concert; the bandannaed negress wrangling at the weeds with her hoe blade inside the rail fence; and, half sheltered within the lintels of the office doorway of his mill, Dudley Stackpole, a slim, still ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... of prime importance, never use it for drilling, if you have a driller, as it always has enough work to do for tuning up work. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... modern modulation was unknown, and every piece from beginning to end was played in the same key." That this position is utterly untenable is very evident, for there was nothing to prevent the Egyptians from tuning their harps in the same order of tones and half tones as is used for our modern pianos. That this is even probable may be assumed from the scale of a flute dating back to the eighteenth or nineteenth century B.C. (1700 or 1600 B.C.), which was found in the royal tombs at Thebes, and ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... Hutchinson) has shown that anaesthesia may be produced with accurately made tuning forks at certain rates of vibration (summarized in the British Medical Journal, June 4, 1898). Ferrand in a paper read before the Paris Academy of Medicine in September, 1895, gives reasons for classing some kinds of music as powerful antispasmodics with beneficial therapeutic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... as behooved him, kissed his child behind the vestry door, to soothe all sting, and then he strode forth toward the reading-desk; and the tuning of fiddles sank ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... looked to her as if he were subjecting Dudley to critical inspection before he decided a certain question much, and foolishly, dreaded by the dear soul. That quieted her. And another thing, she liked him to be with Colney, for a clog on him; as it were, a tuning-fork for the wild airs he started. A little pessimism, also, she seemed to like; probably as an appeasement after hearing, and having to share, high flights. And she was, in her queer woman's way, always reassured by his endurance of Colney's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mediocrity, and he was well aware of his failure. He adopted the ideas of his predecessors, resuscitated forgotten effects and added to them, and the chief features of his performance were, the diversity of tones produced, the different methods of tuning his instrument, the frequent employment of double and single harmonics, the simultaneous use of pizzicato and bow passages, the use of double and triple notes, the various staccati, and a wonderful facility for executing wide intervals with ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... of such a blending is sometimes a discordant trying of strings far removed from a melody, very far from a symphony. (For the benefit of those who must be reassured, I will say that I have felt a musician tuning his violin, that I have read about a symphony, and so have a fair intellectual perception of my metaphor.) But with training and experience the faculties gather up the stray notes and combine them into a full, harmonious whole. If the person who accomplishes this task is ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... resonator. [ringing in the ears] tinnitus [Med.]. [devices which make a resonating sound] bell, doorbell, buzzer; gong, cymbals (musical instruments) 417. [physical resonance] sympathetic vibrations; natural frequency, coupled vibration frequency; overtone; resonating cavity; sounding board, tuning fork. [electrical resonance] tuning, squelch, frequency selection; resonator, resonator circuit; radio &c [chemical resonance] resonant structure, aromaticity, alternating double bonds, non-bonded resonance; pi clouds, unsaturation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and he began to rapidly unscrew his flute, but so hurriedly that in place of separating the top joint from the next he pulled it open at the tuning-slide, changed colour, and swung himself round so as to turn his back to his companions, keeping in that position till his instrument was properly separated and replaced in its case, whose lid he closed, and then turned ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... Thompson more remarkable than during this hour dedicated to the tuning and exalting of the souls of these girls. Several told me that she held their hearts in her hands when she talked and that they would follow her straight to the battlefield. She, herself, assumed her most serious and exalted expression. I have never heard any one ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... brought in, and the boys had arranged a program. Harry had a fine baritone voice, while George could take a high note and sustain it as well as most sopranos. When all the preliminaries had been arranged, the instrument was produced, and after a little preliminary tuning, George played "America." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... I have hearde such a long Sermon on Marriage-duty and Service, that I am faine to sit down and weepe. But no, I must not, for they are waiting for me in the Hall, and the Guests are come and the Musick is tuning, and my Lookes must not betray me.—And now farewell, Journall; for Rose, who first bade me keepe you (little deeming after what Fashion), will not pack you up, and I will not close you with a heavie Strayn. Robin is calling me beneath the Window,—Father ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... and good, For tuning the nerves and digesting the food— Graceful gymnastics for stirring the blood Without the gross purpose of use Ant, let me tell you 'tis not a la mode To plod like a pilgrim, and carry a load, ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... certain prominent subjects have been selected with which it behoves every one to be acquainted: such, for example, as relate to what may be called our HOUSEHOLD INSTRUMENTS, namely, the Thermometer, the Barometer, and Vernier; the Hydrometer, the Hygrometer; the Tuning-Fork, Musical Glasses and Music generally; the Compass; the Prism, the Telescope, and the Sun-Dial. These subjects, and those in immediate connexion with them, are treated of extensively; as also their application to Science, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... music. He is like one who has been four days dead, to whose body the music has recalled the soul. Down by his knee he holds a violin, fashioned like those of the orchestra within; which, as he listens, he is tuning to their pitch. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... eventide. Close was the garden and serene. The leaning reeds in quiet state About the pool, merged in the green Of misty leaves and hanging vines. The fireflies spun their silver lines Across the deeper atmosphere, And through the silence came the clear Persistent tuning of the frogs From dank recesses ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... rain battered at the orchard blossoms the next day and the next. Kenny found a tuning outfit in a closet and spent his days with Joan tuning the Craig piano. He was grateful in the gloom of dark wood and dust for the fantastic thing of lavender she wore. It was like a bit of iris in a bog, he told her, and was sorry ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... crept painfully along the quivering path, against which the wind shrieked and wailed as it shook it, causing it to murmur like a vast tuning-fork. On we went, I do not know for how long, only gazing round now and again, when it was absolutely necessary, until at last we saw that we were on the very tip of the spur, a slab of rock, little larger than an ordinary table, that throbbed and jumped ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... these, Madame, for the Private Theatricals of a Most Christian Majesty." Think what a stab; crueler than daggers through one's heart: "Crebillon?" M. de Voltaire said nothing; looked nothing, in those sacred circles; and never ceased outwardly his worship, and assiduous tuning, of the Pompadour: but he felt—as only Phoebus Apollo in the like case can!"Away!" growled he to himself, when this atrocity had culminated. And, in effect, is, since the end of 1746 or so, pretty much ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... to their seats as the musicians come stringing in. Soon there is a general tuning up—scrapings, toots, snorts, subdued screeches, raspings, and all that busy buzz-fuzz business of getting ready ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... got to stage-manage, parson," he said at last, lightly enough, but with a hint of tiredness in his eyes. "And then vanish behind the scenes, leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up 'The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden,'" he finished, without a trace of bitterness. "So I sent Madame a note by a little nigger newsie." His eyes crinkled, and he quoted the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem to exercise a meticulous ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler |
